What a difference a year can make. Last year, the Deccan Chargers finished at the bottom of the barrel at the IPL and were the league’s laughing stock; this year, the players are laughing all the way to the bank. For fashioning the mother-of-all-turnarounds and winning IPL Season 2, the team also took home an incentive bonus of just over $83,000 – and that’s on top of the $1.2 million prize money and the big, pre-recession salaries. And there’s more to come – franchise chairman V Shankar has promised the players stock options in the company when it goes public. He was delivering on a pre-tournament promise that hinged on the Chargers climbing from bottom to top. The Chargers, Shankar said, would wait for the valuation of the two new teams to be included in the IPL from 2011 before going public. The recession is likely to be done by then, so the wait will surely be worthwhile.